


UNLIFE

by Hallie_Blue



Series: The Guilt Trials and Other Related Works [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Maze Runner (2014), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Companion to the Grief Trials, Gen, Newt POV, characters are in the afterlife, dead characters mourn their living friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3249605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hallie_Blue/pseuds/Hallie_Blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A companion to "The Grief Trials". </p><p>Unlife is the story of Stiles/Thomas's departed friends in the hereafter.</p><p> </p><p>"If he had known that he would spend all eternity with a limp and a hole in his head back when he was alive, Newt thinks he probably would have gone about things a little differently."</p>
            </blockquote>





	UNLIFE

**Part One**

> _“The person you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger.” ~Fall Out Boy_

If he had known that he would spend all eternity with a limp and a hole in his head back when he was alive, Newt thinks he probably would have gone about things a little differently.

**  
  
**

At first things are a frenzied rush, like a movie set on fast-forward-times-eight, he watches the remaining Gladers escape in what feels like a hazed dream-state and his own death is more than a little foggy. It shocks the living klunk out of his pale ghostly arse when time slows down enough and he realizes that he’s not the only dead person following Thomas around.

Alby and Chuck are there too, as well as three people he doesn’t know.

They’re playing poker with singed cards around a singed table in a corner of the room.

“Newt!” Chuck practically tackles Newt to the ground...or through it. He’s still not sure how the whole being dead thing works yet. All he knows is that apparently bloodstains are quite the fashion for the dead.

He’s not sure how he’d expected his post-mortem reunion with Alby to go, but he didn’t expect it to involve quite so much frowning.

To be fair, Newt isn’t sure why he says what he does to begin with. “What’s the matter? Not happy to see me?”

It’s only after Alby bitch-slaps him that he remembers they’re both bloody dead.

“Not really, no.” He gets what Alby’s saying, he really does.

Newt frowns anyway and carefully picks a new topic of discussion, “Care to introduce me to your new friends?”

“Sure.” Alby, Newt knows, is still completely pissed at him, “Newt, meet Allison, Boyd, and Erica.” He points to each one as they’re introduced.

“Hi,” said Boyd, he’s taller, quieter, and more muscular than Alby, with dark skin, short hair and deep puncture wounds in his diaphragm from what look like some type of claws.

“Hey sexy.” The blonde, Erica, purrs seductively even though her throat is cut open and blood pouring down the front of her red blouse, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He doesn’t know whether or not it’s his imagination or if she actually sounds disappointed to be meeting him in person.

The third stranger, Allison, has shoulder-length black hair, ivory skin, a massive stab wound, and a look of purest loathing on her face.

She does not offer him a the same cordial, if not terse, greeting her friends do. Instead she says, “How could you.”

“Sorry? How could I what exactly.”

“Die.” Alby says the same time Allison says, “Do that to Stiles.”

“Who the bloody buggering shuck is Stiles?”

“Stiles. Thomas. Whatever you called the guy who you made shoot you in the head!” Allison’s voice is an angry hiss and Newt’s suddenly afraid she’s going to kill him again...She’s going to find a way to kill a dead person, he just knows it. She’s going to re-kill him. She’s going to send him to the After-afterlife. Is that even possible? Newt doesn’t really want to find out.

“I thought I was going to die anyway.” It’s true. He did, even if he knows better now. There’s nothing he can do to change the fact that he didn’t know that before he died.

Alby sighs, Allison huffs, and Erica, Boyd, and Chuck look at one another like they’re waiting for the world to implode.

Alby finally breaks the long silence, “Want us to deal ya in?”

“Good that.”

They’re several hands in when Newt sees Thomas walk in to the room and sit down at the other table with a cup of coffee and some toast.

“Tommy?” Newt asks eyes wide.

“He can’t hear us Newt.” Chuck whispers, “He’s still living.”

It takes Newt a moment to understand this, “So, then, what do we call, this? It’s not death, right? I mean, we’re not bloody ghosts.”

“We’re in limbo.” says Erica, “we’re Unliving. Somewhere in-between Life and the After.”

“We’re clearly dead though. I mean, look at us.”

“Yeah, but until we’re ready we’re stuck. Limbo...Unlife, whatever  you call it, that’s where we are until we get to move to the After.”

**  
  
**Uncertain of what he should make of this new information Newt’s Unlife begins with a bang! and a game or twelve of Texas Hold ‘Em.


End file.
